Yummmie! I love aubergines!! I'm sure that recipe from your friend will be a hit (especially if my men don't know what is in it...), and I'm totally intrigued by the jelly meatballs. I have come across 'grape jelly' in American recipes before but I don't think we can get it here. I guess it's like a jam jelly/preserve type thing made from grapes? I shall scour the shops but I'm not hopeful. Presumably one could make it oneself? (must check the jam thread...).

NO GRAPE JELLY????!!!!! Why, I've never heard of such a thing! Lakritz: In the USA, grape jelly is right up there with "Mom and Apple Pie"....every child has had a PBJ sam-wich with Welch's Grape Jelly and Peanut Butter, with the crusts cut off!!!

I truly am stunned that in all of your grocery stores, you can't find a jar of Welch's Concord Grape Jelly; it may not say "Concord", but that's the variety that you're looking for. In America, it's so omniprescent, that they sell it in 1 gallon jugs!

Here is the simplest of recipes to make Concord Grape Jelly yourself, but truly, if I had to go to that effort to make the meatballs.....I wouldn't! In Michigan, where I live, I'm surrounded by grape growers, who sell 100% of their crops to Welch's; in September, when the grapes are ripe, you can open your mouth and taste "grape" on your tongue, from the grape sugar evaporating in the hot Autumn air. If you can buy already made, high quality Concord grape juice, it cuts out half of the processing time.

By the way, in the USA, unless you hear otherwise, "grape" almost always means Concord, unless it's a wine or fruit salad.

First make the grape juice Using clean washed grapes.
To 3 1/2 pounds of clean grapes add 1 1/2 cups water.
Bring to a boil and Simmer covered for 10 minutes.
Strain and squeeze out all of the juice with a jelly cloth,or whatever means you have.
In a very big pan put 5 cups of the juice.
Add the fruit pectin to the juice.
Mix well.
On High Heat Bring to a full rolling boil,and boil hard for 1 minute,stirring constantly.
Stir in sugar all at once,and bring back to a full rolling boil,again boil hard for 1 minute stirring constantly.
Remove from heat,skim off foam,and pour into hot jars.
If using paraffin-pour hot paraffin in on top of jelly.
Or seal with canning lids.

Lakritz wrote:

ancho chili? What's different about it from 'normal' chili powder? And is chipotl powder particularly hot paprika?
I'm so sorry about all these questions. I'm glad you like the thread, and I'm very excited about trying them all. Though I suddenly remembered that I'm without oven at the moment, only the gas burners work, so the results might not be quite as expected...

Oh yes, Lipton I only know as tea but Ocean Spray have obviously cornered the cranberry market, they have lots of cranberry drinks in the supermarket. So, it's quite conceivable that they also sell their cranberry sauce here.
Thanks also for the 'stories' and info that go with the recipes. I shall include those in the recipe booklet for Karl if I may.

For the various chili powders, you could just substitute (BUT TASTE AS YOU GO!!!!!!) ground red pepper flakes. It's one of those things that if you live in a Hispanic neighborhood, you can run to the corner store and pick the stuff up but if you don't the ground red pepper flakes will work. Paprika has to "earthy" a taste for this and would muddy the flavour; you need a "knife-sharp" chili taste.

And you can't possibly ask ME too many questions; I'm the person who was the annoying kid who always asked "Why?" "Why?" Why?" But, I like what I grew up to become, so it all works out in the end. _________________Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.
Groucho Marx

mix everything together. form not to big meat balls, flatten them a little
fry in hot oil.

Klops
Take the above meat mixture and form a big loaf. Put inside 4-5 hard boiled ( and shelled) eggs. Close well. Sprinkle some breadcrinps and a little oil on the loaf. Bake for abour 30-40 minutes ( or until it is ready - in my mother's words). Serve with mashed or roasted potatoes. This is real soul food for me and my family.

I'm really impressed with all of these fabulous-sounding meatball recipes. I grew up not liking meatballs and never got attached to them as an adult.

Anyone have a recipe for a Corndog-on-a-stick meatball?

Dear Sarape, You of the Creative Mind,

You may have hit on something legit here, my friend! Corndog battered meatballs! What a cool concept!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you feel like being the Mad Scientist of the Day, here's a great recipe for Mini Corn Dogs, so I can't see why you couldn't just substitute small meatballs instead.

Good Luck, Sarape! Keep us posted.

Mini Corn Dogs

MAKES 30 CORN DOGS

Ingredients

2/3 cup freshly ground cornmeal, medium grind

1/3 cup all-purpose flour, plus extra flour for coating

1 tablespoon salt

1/8 tablespoon cayenne

1 egg, beaten

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 cup beer

10 good quality hot dogs

30 wooden skewers

Oil for deep frying

Dijon mustard for dipping sauce

Directions

Combine the cornmeal, 1/3 cup flour, salt, and cayenne in a large bowl.

Mix together the egg, oil, and beer; add them to the dry mixture and blend well.

Cut the hot dogs in thirds and skewer each piece. Roll the pieces in the additional flour, then dip each into the cornmeal batter.

Heat the oil in a wok or heavy skillet until it is hot but not smoking. Fry the dogs a few at a time, turning them to brown on all sides. Lift them with a slotted spoon and drain them on paper towels. Arrange the skewers on a platter around a little bowl of mustard for dipping._________________Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.
Groucho Marx

It's going to have to happen this late Fall, Sarape! I'm going on my 29th day without a day off, since the weather finally "broke" and I can plant! I'm averaging 3 new clients per week, so it's high class take out for me, right now!

However, this sounds perfect to try in October! And I've already got my travel plans for the MinnesotaStateFair; I can already hear the Corn Dogs calling my name! _________________Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.
Groucho Marx

Fellow foodies!
First of all: apologies, Ive been out of circulation since Monday (unpleasant business, day-to-day business, and luckily, also a lot of going out with friends).
Secondly: I cannot thank you enough for all your wonderful suggestions  and they are all so very different!! I shall try and cook them all and let the family vote for them, on a scale of 1-10. (Just for fun!)
Thirdly: to answer to you personally  how on earth do I activate this QUOTE business???

AND last, but not least: I went on a fact-finding tour concerning those ingredients I queried. Now, Birmingham is the second largest city in Britain, and has a multicultural population second only to London, so, really, one would have thought any ingredient could be found if one only looked hard and long enough. So okay, I didnt look for long and I havent checked all the ethnic places in town yet, but I tested 3 supermarkets.

1) Waitrose: upmarket, expensive supermarket, on the small side, often stock whatever unusual ingredient one is short of  at a price
2) Sainsburys: one of the big three (& the one Jamie Oliver advertises); the one I went to is huge and towards the posh end of the town, so more likelihood of unusual ingredients for the discerning taste
3) Tescos: one of the big three (& often at the cutting edge); the one I used is even bigger than the Sainsburys and even further towards the posh end of the town (actually, both of them are already outside Birmingham)
I was looking for:
· Liptons onion soup mix
· Ocean Spray Cranberry sauce
· Lingonberry Sauce
· panko breadcrumbs
· Welchs Concord grape jelly

I came back with: Ocean Spray Cranberry sauce and Sainsburys own onion soup mix. Spending £24 in the process (no, of course not on just those items!!) but also doing my bit for the community by collecting Sainsburys vouchers for school (is that sort of thing going on elsewhere, too?).

Thirdly: to answer to you personally  how on earth do I activate this QUOTE business???

Lakritz: There's two ways to do the "quote" thing. One, is to hit the "quote" button on the person's post that you want to quote; it's located on the upper right hand corner.

If you're doing multiple quotes from many posters or from many points from the same post, you manually can do quotes by the following:

[quote="Posters Name" Than you copy and paste the text HERE, and then close it off with[/quote] Be sure to include quotation marks around the person's name on Clotilde's site, as many other sites don't require them. Make sure to put a ] behind the[" poster's name"]; I couldn't do it because when I did, it actually posted as a quote and you wouldn't see the code to write it.

I'm glad that you found at least some of the items you were looking for, but I'm sad about the grape jelly. Where do you live? Your location isn't listed under your name._________________Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.
Groucho Marx

I think the easiest way is to choose the "quote" button which appears at the top and right hand side of the entry you're replying to. If there is extraneous text in there, you can highlight it and delete the portion that's irrelevant, taking care not to delete any of the HTML.

You can also choose the "preview" button that appears directly below the reply screen to see if what you're trying to do has worked and keep mashing around until it does. That headbanging the text and instant feedback is how I learn best.

As for lingonberry sauce, do you have Ikea stores in Birmingham? At our Ikeas they have a food market that has all kinds of Swedish foods. And not finding grape jelly is really no loss. It's kinda awful oversweet stuff best suited to the appetites of 6 year olds. In my opinion, of course. I would think plum jelly/jam/preserves or even pineapple would work nicely too to provide the "sweet" half of a sweet/tart combo._________________God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny. -- Garrison Keillor

I bought cranberry jelly which seems awfully sweet so I might use that. Other recipes I have for sweet and sour sauces seem to use honey.

On the actual meatball front: I have tried the porcupines! I had to cook them in the sauce on the hob (because my oven isn't working) so they didn't come out as spiky as I thought they would be (or maybe that depends on the rice you use, I used the American easy-cook variety) but the taste and the consistency were very good.